The Demigod Proving (8 page)

“Aren’t you going to help?”

She wanted to help. It was her duty. But first she needed to do what she could for Cuchorack and herself.

“I will,” she said. “But I have to talk with Brentna first.”

Without waiting for her friend’s response, she turned away and darted across the front of the Wall, through the clutter past the gate, and up the next flight of stairs.

She paused at the door as two serving girls pushed past her. She looked back at Cuchorack’s husk. She let the rage—magnified by her human body—solidify her resolve.

She would do whatever it took to serve Athanaric, Teirn, and Wrend that night. Even if it meant facing Brentna.

She entered the Wall, and headed for Brentna’s chamber.

Chapter 8: No time for patience

The best thing anyone can do for themselves, is work toward noble goals.

-Weicketable

Leenda’s slippers sighed against the stone floor, and her dress rustled as she ran along the corridors and up or down stairs. She’d almost reached Brentna’s room.

As in all hallways of the Wall, the light from lanterns hanging over doors gave the gray stone walls a harsh glint. Here, so far from the courtyard, word had not yet spread about the disaster, and so priests, mothers, and other serving girls were in no hurry to go and help. They scattered out of her way as she ran past them.

She soon halted at a door nearly identical to her own. It stood two-feet wide and consisted of such flimsy wood that she could hear the laughter from inside. She clicked her tongue against her teeth and shook her head. Pubescent human girls giggled so much.

She raised her hand to knock, and hesitated.

Goat guts! Why was she so nervous?

She rapped her knuckles on the door, harder than intended, in a way that probably came across as angry. Inside, the laughter stopped.

“Who is it?” said a girl’s voice from inside.

She responded by knocking again, and clenching her jaw.

Brentna, a brown-haired serving girl in a white dress, opened the door. When she saw Leenda, her expression changed from cautious and penitent to annoyed and petulant. She looked back at the other girls who sat on the edge of a bed. The only other furniture in the tiny room was a dresser opposite the bed, and a freestanding rack where dresses dangled on hangers. On the dresser, a lantern cast yellow light over the gray stone walls.

“Oh, look,” Brentna said. “It’s Firehead.”

The girls snickered.

Leenda clenched her teeth. She couldn’t imagine a less inventive nickname. Not surprising. It was small wonder that draegons had ruled over humans for eons.

“Brentna,” she said. “I need to speak with you for a moment. Please.”

Brentna straightened her back, folded her arms, and lifted her chin. “What do you want?”

Leenda repressed a growl. She’d wanted a quick conversation—it was how a draegon would have naturally gone about it—but by not engaging in small talk, Brentna had slighted her. She always did. Most of the girls did. All but Cressa.

“Yes,” said a blonde inside the room, “what is it that our little Firehead wants?”

Another round of giggling.

Leenda fought the urge to punch Brentna in the face. “I need to switch stations with you, tonight.”

Brentna’s face twisted in disbelief. “Uh, no—I’ve been chosen to serve god tonight.”

“Who are
you
serving?” the blonde said. “The fiddlers?” She laughed at her own cleverness.

“You know,” said the third girl, a brunette. She gave Brentna a smug look. “There’s a reason they didn’t choose Firehead to serve at Athanaric’s table tonight. The color for the night is yellow. I can’t imagine anything that would look worse with red hair.”

They all chuckled.

Leenda clenched her fists and jaw. Goat guts! Humans treated each other with such cruelty. Draegons had no such desire to make others feel small—though they did understand rage and how to inflict pain.

Mixed with whatever powers made teenage girls so emotional, Leenda didn’t stand a chance to end the conversation with any degree of civility. She knew it, and recognized certain risks, but she didn’t care. All reason and rationale disintegrated like a cube of sugar in hot water.

She focused on her discernment and became aware of the different Ichors roiling inside her. She selected Flux and bound it to Brentna’s sternum, and smiling sweetly placed a forefinger in the same spot. Before Brentna could react, Leenda pushed lightly with her finger and applied Ichor hard and fast.

With a cry, Brentna flew back into the room. In a flurry of ponytails and arms, she twirled and landed face-down in the laps of her friends. Leenda followed, stepping inside and shutting the door behind her, careful not to slam it. The three girls howled, but Leenda didn’t let up on the Ichor.

The blonde and brunette pushed together against Brentna, trying to slide her off of their legs, but Leenda bound Flux Ichor to several spots along Brentna’s side and applied. Flux flowed out of her in a steady stream; she immediately felt the effect, as if her body were deflating. The girls’ eyes widened and they pushed harder. Brentna screamed. Leenda nearly laughed. She was hardly using any Ichor, and here this human girl squealed like a mountain goat being carried off as a draegon snack.

“What are you doing to her?” the blonde said.

“What?” Leenda said. “What are you talking about?”

She stood away from the girls, with her back nearly against the door, and raised her hands. She cut off the flow of Ichor and Brentna slid to the floor with a thump. Leenda bound Flux Ichor to the blonde’s and brunette’s foreheads, and applied it. Because she hadn’t touched the girls, she had to use more Ichor. But that was fine. She had plenty to spare. The girls jerked backward, bending at the hips. The backs of their heads bounced off of the stone wall with dull thumps. They began to wail.

Brentna scrambled to her hands and knees and looked up at Leenda with wide eyes and gaping mouth. Leenda didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or run. She’d worked for years to reach this point, and now she’d put everything at risk simply because of some teasing. If these girls understood what she’d done—and if they told anyone—her game could end. The Mistress would cast her out. Maybe worse. Her only option seemed to be to frighten these girls into silence.

Inexplicably, the entire situation made her want a good cry.

Her emotions hadn’t been so bad when she was a newborn. Back then, it was simply a matter of learning to maneuver the new body and putting up with the ridiculous cooing and baby-talk of adults. Toddlerhood would’ve passed without incident except that all the humans wanted to treat her like an incompetent fool. By age three she realized that until she grew a little taller, she would accomplish nothing—humans simply couldn’t cope with the fact that she was smarter than them. Even her parents, who knew she was a draegon in a human body, didn’t get it.

Luckily, at age six, she obtained employ as the servant of a priest, and steadily worked her way toward the Seraglio, where she would finally have the chance to find her mate. At times she’d faltered in her quest, but every day she thought of how Athanaric had found their lair, used their draegon pup as bait, and overcome her mate and carried him down the canyon. She’d tried to defeat Athanaric, but failed, and could only take comfort in the fact that Athanaric hadn’t killed her companion outright. If he had, Cuchorack’s soul would have gone into the firmament and become lost to her. But, as Athanaric told them once, years before during a previous hunt, he wanted a draegon for a child.

Now he had one, but he also had one for a serving girl.

She smiled at Brentna. “That was
very
strange, wasn’t it?”

Brentna shied away and raised a hand in defense against an unseen threat. The other girls wailed as they sat up, rubbing the backs of their heads.

Leenda placed a hand on the door handle. “It would be terrible if something like that happened again, wouldn’t it?”

Tears had started to stream down Brentna’s face.

Leenda made her tone hard, raised her eyebrows, and took a threatening step toward Brentna.

“Wouldn’t it?”

Brentna nodded with frightened enthusiasm.

“Good. Then I think you’ll agree that you and I should trade stations tonight. Yes?”

Brentna’s head bobbed up and down.

“Very good. Thank you.”

Smiling, Leenda left the girls alone. She headed back toward the courtyard, where she could help with the disaster. With luck, Brentna would keep quiet about the incident long enough—just a few hours—for Leenda to learn from the dinner conversation which of the two demigods was her mate.

Then she could begin the process of shedding her ridiculous human body.

Chapter 9: A brother’s secrets

Taking some actions always results in suffering of one sort or another. One of these actions is disobeying your mother.

-Teirn

“Why,” Wrend said, “do you think that going to the Reverencing is a bad thing?”

He said it as he shut the door behind him, and turned to look at Teirn, who stood next to a series of shelves. Wrend had built those particular shelves right into the wall a year before, when he’d constructed the house. But each week, afterward, he’d added more shelves, until they covered every inch of wall space. Then he’d filled the shelves with trinkets.

The only other furniture in the room was a wide worktable and a chair. Four wooden boxes sat along the top of the table. They housed Wrend’s tools, which he used to make the trinkets. He always cleaned them up, after every use.

“I always thought these were so amazing,” Teirn said.

He shook his head in admiration as he looked over the scores of miniature figures on the shelves. He picked up an eagle in flight and admired it.

Wrend stepped past Teirn to lean out the window. Glancing at the paladins outside his house, he pulled the shutters almost closed. Without the window open, the room fell dim, with only a crack of light coming through the partly open shutters.

After the Master had found them in the glade, he’d taken them back to the courtyard, where serving girls, priests, and mothers had already started to clean up the mess. A few minutes later, paladins flowed in through the Wall’s open gates. They filled the courtyard and moved up into the canyon, to the villages spread throughout the Seraglio. The Master flew away on his draegon, pleading a need to check on the villages to ensure their safety.

Wrend and Teirn helped the priests, serving girls, and Caretakers clean up some of the mess in the courtyard—the crushed wagons, broken crates, kirana corpses, and other bodies. Miraculously, the cheese wagon survived without a scratch. Only over time, as word spread throughout the group, did they learn about the slaughter up at the nursery. Wrend’s heart sickened at the news; he knew many of the mothers at the nursery. They’d helped raise him, cared for him, taught him.